How to Choose a Domain for Your International Website

October 30, 2015

The type of domain you choose when expanding your business abroad can have a massive effect on trust, engagement and rankings in the target region.

If your business already has a successful brand, it makes sense to expand abroad using the same brand name and to incorporate this into your chosen domain name. However, not all brand names translate easily and seamlessly into other languages.

To avoid sabotaging your international marketing campaigns before you’ve even had a chance to deliver your message to an international audience, you should address potential issues that may arise from poor brand name or domain name selection by working with native speakers of the language you are targeting.

Once you have validated your domain and/or brand name, your job is not done.

Before setting up an international website, you will need to decide on the structure of the international URLs.

Picking the right URL structure is a decision that will determine how easy your content will be to index, how much maintenance work you will have to carry out on the international variants, and the direction of your international off-page SEO strategy.